To celebrate the addition of Ian McDiarmid into The Empire Strikes Back, starwarsshop.com offers this exclusive holographic version of the Emperor. For those of you who have pre-ordered it, it should be arriving soon, or probably already has, mine came today.

The figure comes enclosed in a Star Case to ensure minty goodness, and is packed in bubble wrap, surrounded by peanuts, and the outer box is marked "Fragile" ("Must be Italian!"). Maybe they're learning after all those dinged-up Silver Sandtroopers. Unlike the other figures in the OTC, Palpatine isn't numbered, and he also has an extra line on his name tag, "Executor Transmission." Really, the other figures should've had this too, but oh well. He has the red Imperial theme with six other ESB figures on the back. His background is a picture of the room where Vader talked to him. His pictures on the insert and cardback are of Ian, and the paragraph even has some of his new dialogue. He also comes with the little booklet that all the other OTC figures have.

The figure itself is just a re-cast of the old 1997 POTF2 Emperor Palpatine figure, cast in translucent blue-purple. He has absolutely no paint or color other than what he's cast in, but that's fine since this particular hologram is all blue. His walking cane is included, and is also holographic (the first real holo accessory, Luke's saber doesn't count). He doesn't have a base of any kind, but since he's a salt-shaker figure he doesn't need one. His outer cape is pretty flimsy, moreso than the old one was. His arms also seem to be made out of the slightly softer material currently being used. For some reason, there's a bubble where Palpatine's shins would be, inside the figure; I really don't know why it's there. In reality, this figure should be only from Palpatine's shoulders up, and be like 7" high. But alas, this is all we get. For those of you who missed out on the Darth Sidious (Holograph) figure in the EI line, this is the next best thing.

Until Gentle Giant makes a correct-scale bust of the holo Emperor, this is all we got. And for what it is, it's pretty good. B+